Howl I Met Him: Werewolf Trials

Chapter 4

The courtyard had turned into chaos by the time they reached it.

Students were sprinting in every direction, some toward the dorms, some just running blind, and somewhere above the noise a horn was sounding in three short blasts that Reyna's body understood before her brain did.

Danger. Now. Move.

"Stay behind me," Kade said.

"Not a chance."

"Reyna."

"I said not a chance." She grabbed a fallen branch off the ground, because it was the only weapon within reach and panic made poor negotiators of everyone. "You said I'm a warden's blood. Doesn't that mean I'm supposed to be useful for exactly this?"

Kade didn't answer.

He didn't have time to.

Something came around the side of the east wing low to the ground, moving wrong, joints bending at angles that made Reyna's stomach flip. It wasn't a wolf. It wasn't anything she had a name for. Its skin looked stretched too thin over a frame built for something else entirely, and when it lifted its head toward the crowd, its eyes glowed the same sick red as the moon that had apparently marked her since birth.

"That's it," Kade said, very quiet. "That's the Hunger."

"That's the thing seven people died sealing?"

"That's the thing seven people died sealing."

"Cool." Her hands had gone cold around the branch. "Cool cool cool."

The creature's head swung toward them.

Toward her, specifically, like it recognized something in her blood the same way the seal apparently had.

"Move," Kade said, and this time she didn't argue.

They broke for the tree line together, Kade half a step ahead and glancing back every few strides to make sure she was still there, and behind them the creature let out a sound that peeled the hair up on the back of Reyna's neck, something between a snarl and a laugh.

It was gaining.

"It's faster than it looks," Kade said, breathless.

"Thank you for that incredibly helpful update."

"I'm working with what I've got."

They cut hard around the chapel, and Reyna's foot caught a root she didn't see. She went down hard, palms scraping stone, and the world tipped sideways for one long, terrible second.

Kade didn't slow down to think.

He turned, planted himself between her and the thing closing the last stretch of ground, and shifted.

It happened faster than she could track, one second a boy in a dark jacket, the next something huge and grey and snarling, fur rippling down muscle that hadn't been there a breath ago. He didn't look at her. He didn't have time to. He met the creature head on, and the sound of that collision was something Reyna knew she'd hear in her sleep for weeks.

She scrambled up, palms burning, heart trying to climb out of her chest.

"Kade!"

He didn't answer. He couldn't. He was locked in with the thing, teeth and claws and a snarl that didn't sound like him at all, and for one horrible stretch of seconds Reyna genuinely thought she was about to watch him die in front of her over something that was, according to every rumor on campus, her fault.

[Not today,] she thought. [Absolutely not today.]

She didn't remember deciding to move.

She just remembered running straight at the fight instead of away from it, branch raised, some instinct older than fear screaming louder than her common sense ever could.

The creature's head snapped toward her the second she got close, red eyes locking on hers, and for one strange, suspended moment it went completely still.

Like it recognized her.

Like it was waiting for something.

Then Kade drove his shoulder into its side, and the moment broke, and the whole world dissolved into noise and motion.

She didn't know how long the fight lasted. Time did something strange, stretching and compressing, until finally the creature let out a shriek that cracked the air apart and bolted for the tree line, vanishing into the dark like it had never been there at all.

Silence dropped over the courtyard so suddenly it felt like its own kind of violence.

Kade shifted back on his hands and knees, breathing hard, blood running from a gash along his ribs that made Reyna's whole body go cold.

"You're hurt."

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding, that's not fine, that's the opposite of fine."

She was on her knees beside him before she'd decided to move, hands hovering over the wound like she could hold it shut through sheer force of will.

He caught her wrist.

Not hard. Just enough to stop her.

"Reyna."

"What."

"It looked at you." His eyes found hers, dark and serious under the mess of his hair. "Right before it ran. It looked at you like it knew you."

"I don't know what that means."

"Neither do I." His grip loosened, sliding down until his fingers laced through hers instead, and for a second neither of them moved to let go. "But I don't like it."

"You don't like a lot of things tonight."

"I don't like almost watching you get killed either, so we're even."

The words came out rougher than he probably meant them to, and something about the rawness in his voice made her chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with fear anymore.

"You shifted for me," she said quietly.

"I'd do it again."

"You barely know me."

"Feels like I've known you longer than a day." He said it like it embarrassed him, like the words had slipped out before he could stop them, and for once there was nothing guarded in his face at all. "I don't know what that's about. I don't love not knowing things."

"Join the club."

His thumb moved once against her knuckles, absent, unconscious, and Reyna felt it land somewhere much deeper than her hand.

Footsteps broke the moment before it could go any further, a dozen students and two very alarmed looking professors spilling into the courtyard, and Kade let go of her hand like it burned, pushing to his feet and pulling his usual mask back into place half a second too late for Reyna to un-see what had been underneath it.

"It's gone," he told the professors, voice gone flat and formal. "It ran east."

Nobody was looking at Reyna yet.

That changed fast.

A woman at the front of the group, silver haired and sharp eyed in a way that made the whole courtyard straighten up without being told to, crossed the distance in a few clipped strides and stopped in front of Reyna like she was inspecting livestock.

"You're the new girl," she said. "The one born under the red moon."

"I have a name."

"I don't care." The woman's eyes flicked to Kade, to the blood on his shirt, to the space where their hands had been a moment before, and something calculating moved behind her expression. "I'm Councilwoman Ashworth. I sit on the same board that's kept that thing sealed for two hundred years." Her gaze came back to Reyna, cold and assessing. "And as of tonight, you're the only person on this campus it's ever looked at like it recognized."

"That's not my fault."

"I didn't say it was." Ashworth's mouth thinned into something that wasn't quite a smile. "But it does mean you're not just a student anymore. You're a variable. And variables get watched." She turned, already walking away, tossing the last of it over her shoulder like an afterthought that wasn't one at all. "Starting tonight."

The courtyard went quiet again, students exchanging looks, and Reyna stood there with scraped palms and her heart still hammering and Kade's blood drying on her sleeve where she'd tried to hold his wound shut, and thought, distantly, that whatever normal life she'd imagined walking through those gates yesterday was never coming back.

Kade appeared at her shoulder a second later, close enough that his voice barely needed to carry.

"Don't listen to her."

"Kind of hard not to when she just called me a variable to my face."

"She calls everyone something clinical. It's how she avoids feeling anything." He glanced sideways at her, and some of the mask slipped again, just for her. "For what it's worth, that thing didn't recognize you as a threat back there."

"How do you know?"

"Because threats get attacked." His jaw tightened. "It looked at you like it was waiting for permission."

Reyna's stomach dropped all over again.

"Permission for what?"

Kade didn't answer.

He didn't get the chance to, because that was the exact moment Councilwoman Ashworth turned back around, expression gone sharp as a blade, and said the one sentence that made the whole courtyard go dead silent.

"Someone find out which one of them let it out."